Honey
by neotantrika
Summary: Chuck and Ned make pies and make eyes at one another. An exploration of taste and smell as a sublimation of something ... else.


Seven hours and thirty-four minutes after he fell asleep, the Pie-Maker's eyes opened in the darkened room he shared with his childhood love and he said, "Honey"

Seven hours and thirty-four minutes after he fell asleep, the Pie-Maker's eyes opened in the darkened room he shared with his childhood love and he said, "Honey". He glanced over to make sure he hadn't wakened Chuck and was relieved to see that she was still asleep. He turned on his side and spent a few minutes just looking at her--lashes dark against her cheek, the last part of her he'd ever touch in this lifetime; small hands folded under said cheek, the tumble of her bark-colored hair. Her blanket had slipped a little, showing her bare shoulder; he wondered what had happened to her (his) nightshirt. It was too big for her, and it kept slipping off, and on that thought he swung his legs out of bed and headed for the shower, anxious to be anywhere but in her presence when thoughts like _that_ came to him.

As soon as he left the room, Chuck reacted to his absence by waking up. She blinked as a thin wedge of light cut across her face. The door to the bathroom was ajar; she rose and tiptoed to peer through the gap. She froze in shock and delight as she saw that Ned was in the shower. Despite her intimate familiarity with her aunts' erotica collection, the reality of a naked man was new to her. She hovered just outside the door, watching this intimate ritual of soap and water and shampoo and razor, until Ned shut off the water and turned to climb out. His gaze caught her, pinned her, froze them both in a moment of embarrassed revelation mixed with curiosity. Then she smiled slowly and he smiled back, heat kindling at the back of his eyes, and he reached for a towel. She backed away and closed the door, smiling to herself. _Well_, she thought, half-amused and half-sad, _if we can't touch, we can at least look._

When Ned emerged (decently attired in jeans and a white T-shirt), Chuck was nowhere to be seen. He entered the kitchen and started pulling ingredients from his cupboards: organic, hand-milled flour, sea salt, cane sugar from Hawaii, a basket of ripe gooseberries from Oregon, dried apricots from thousand-year-old groves in Spain. He brought out hand-churned butter from the refrigerator, shoving aside several wheels of cheese recently placed there by a homesick Chuck. He turned his oven on to 375 degrees and put the gooseberries into a small pan, covered them with water and set them to simmer. He put a cup of dried apricots in a small crockery bowl at one side of his prep table, and smiled as he sifted his dry ingredients into his mother's stoneware crockery bowl. He thought about his apricot-pie dream. The trick had always been how to tone down the tartness of the dried apricots without overwhelming their sun-drenched taste with sugar. Maybe he'd found the key, thanks to Chuck.

"Coming in," Chuck warned from the doorway.

"Okay," he acknowledged, safe behind the table. He looked up and dropped his sifter into the bowl. She was wearing his shirt, as usual, as a nightgown, but only two of the buttons were buttoned. He felt his face go hot as she strode in and leaned across the table to pick a dried apricot out of the small bowl. He watched as her strong white teeth bit into it, dropped his gaze to her neck, her collarbone, lower. He was instantly reminded of peaches--golden, round, soft. Touchable.

Ned took a long breath and looked down into the mixing bowl. "Good morning," he said, his voice raspy.

"Good morning," she said. "Are you mad at me?"

He looked at her eyes, the color of sun through ale. "Would you be? If it was me looking at you?"

She looked thoughtful, then shrugged and reached for another apricot. The movement caused her (his) shirt to fall off her shoulder, revealing the smooth curve of arm, the swell of breast. Ned looked away. "No, I guess not," Chuck answered him. "You can try it, and we'll see."

"Not a good idea," he said.

"_I _like it," she said. "And you didn't answer my question."

"No." He reached for the softening butter. "Can you get me the crushed hazelnuts out of the cupboard above the refrigerator, uh, cheese box?"

She straightened, took the two steps across the room to reach up for the cupboard above her head. Her (his) shirt rode up as she reached, and Ned realized that she was not, in fact, wearing anything other than his shirt. He thought of peaches again, and his palms itched to touch, to cradle, to caress. To pinch, even. He wondered if she would wiggle...

She scooted the plastic bag of hazelnuts across the table's surface. "What flavor is this one?" She nodded at the pie.

"Apricot-gooseberry," he said. "I thought of it last night. Can you get me some of your honey?"

She smiled. "Really?"

He nodded. "Apricots and gooseberries tend to be a bit tart. Last night, I thought honey might offset that a little."

She came around the table. "Crossing," she said absently.

Ned shifted to his left to avoid her, glancing right as she reached up into another cupboard and brought down a Mason jar full of liquid gold. She placed it on the table top and moved back to her position across from him. "Thanks," Ned said, and untied the hand-made cloth cover. "Honey for the Homeless" read the label on the side, and the date--last summer. Ned was acutely aware of her gaze on him as he carefully measured honey into the bowl of apricots. He nodded to Chuck. "I think about a half a cup of hot water, to help them plump up..."

"Right," she said, and stepped to the sink. Again, he watched her from the side of his eye as he cut the cool butter and crushed hazelnuts into his mix. When it was the texture of coarse meal, he slowly added a few drops of ice water at a time, squeezing the mixture with his hands.

"Why don't you use a food processor?" Chuck said, pouring the hot water carefully into the apricot bowl.

"Hands-on is better."

"You get very personal with your pies," Chuck said.

Ned stopped mixing and closed his eyes. "Stop."

"No."

"Please. You're making me crazy. You're making us both crazy."

She didn't pretend not to know what he meant. "If you touch me, I'll die. How much crazier can we get?" she said. Her eyes looked sad and her mouth smiled. Ned thought he probably had that same look on his face.

He looked down at the dough forming in the bowl and squeezed it between his fingers. "You know, it would be so much better, so much safer..." He stopped and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "It would be better if you left. You should live on the other side of the world from me."

"I don't want to."

"It's too dangerous for you to be near me."

She turned so that her hip rested against the table. It shook slightly with her movement, conveying her physical solidity to him. Despite his own words, he gladdened at the feel of something, anything, moving against him as a result of her.

"Last time I tried to go somewhere, I got murdered," she reminded him. "If I left you, where would I go? What would I do? Go back to my aunts and tell them I'm not dead after all?"

He shook his head. "No. Too much shock and publicity for that. But you could go to another city."

"And do what? Wait tables?"

"Olive waits tables," he said defensively.

"I don't want to do that," she said. "I can't be a detective like Emerson. And I'm not as good a swimmer as my aunts. The only thing I can do is read books."

He divided the dough and shaped two balls. "I can teach you to make pies."

"Fine," she said. "How long did it take you to learn to bake excellent pies?"

Ned wiped sweat off his forehead with one wrist. His flour-covered hand left a smudge on his face. "A while."

Chuck shrugged. "Okay. Teach me to make pies."

Ned shook his head but said nothing, defeated. He wanted her to stay. He couldn't fight it. "I don't want to ... hurt you," he said. "I'm afraid it will happen if we're so ... close."

"Maybe I should move in with Olive," she said mischievously.

Ned had to smile. "Yeah, you two would get along just great."

She smiled at him, and he could not help but smile back in perfect understanding. He set the balls of dough on the table and shoved the sticky bowl across to her. "Wash that, grasshopper."

She took the bowl to the sink and turned on the water. He watched the hem of her (his) shirt jig up and down with her movements as she soaped the bowl and scrubbed it. "I miss my aunts," she said. "I miss my bees."

Ned scattered flour on his rolling surface and put a ball of dough in it. He pressed his mother's rolling pin into the middle and began rolling it out, stretching it evenly from the center outwards. It was a long-familiar, automatic action. "Maybe we could put your beehive on the roof," he said.

"And what would they eat? Not many flower gardens in the middle of a city," Chuck said. She turned, drying the bowl. "Can I roll one of those out?"

He glanced over at her. The bottom of her (his) shirt was open nearly to her waist, teasing him with a peek-a-boo dance as she rubbed the bowl. He felt his face going hot. "You'd better put on an apron. Or something."

Grinning, she set the bowl on a counter and went into the bedroom. Ned continued to roll the ball of dough out into the correct size for a bottom crust. He turned and rummaged behind him, in a lower cabinet, for a pie plate. There were several, but he fished out the single pie plate he'd kept from his mother's kitchen. It was his special pie plate, the one he tested all his new recipes in.

She was gone so long he had time to rub butter onto the bottom of the pie plate and drape his rolled out dough across it. He was pressing it into the contours of the plate when she came back in, wearing a red flowered dress and shoes. Her look was troubled, sober. "Better?" she asked.

He nodded, stepping away from the table. "You can do the top crust," he said. She tied on the apron again. He flattened himself as she walked past him, smelling her hair (apple shampoo?) as she passed. He watched her small hands push the dough around, flattening it unevenly. He ached to put his hands on hers, guide her, show her how to do it right. But he said nothing and watched as she eventually rolled out a flat circle of dough. He busied himself rinsing the cooked gooseberries under cold water, then dumped them into the apricot-honey mixture. He liked working across from her at the table, shared silence comfortable and solid between them.

She stepped back, looking up at him for approval. He nodded. "Good work," he said, and tried not to openly bask as she smiled.

"Thanks," she said. She reached for the bowl of apricot-gooseberry mixture just as he did, and they grasped opposite sides of the bowl. Ned snatched his hand back as if burned, and she stuck her finger into the mixture, then licked it slowly off. He watched her tongue and felt heat shimmer along his spine. "Yum," she said. She held the bowl out to him, but he stepped back from the table, heart hammering.

"That was too close," he said.

She looked at him. "But nothing happened."

"If you'd grabbed it differently, or our hands had touched..." He swallowed. "Chuck, I mean it. We can't ... we can't keep staying together. Sooner or later, there's going to be an accident. I couldn't stand that."

She set the bowl down slowly. "I couldn't stand being away from you," she said. She looked at him, solemn now. "Could you?"

He wanted to lie and say yes. He said, "No."

She nodded and fished a now-plump apricot from the bowl. She bit into it and juice ran down her chin. She held it out towards him. Ned shook his head, but she didn't waver. Slowly, holding her gaze, he bent forward and opened his mouth. She dropped the half-apricot into his mouth without touching him and took her hand away. He tasted honey and apricot and the tang of gooseberry, and he thought maybe that's what her mouth tasted like _right now_. He wished he could lick her fingers, and watched as she did just that, eyes on his. His eyes turned dark and hers turned soft, and for a long moment the sunny kitchen was a little warmer, a little closer. Then he straightened.

"The honey did the trick," he said. "Not too tart, not too sweet."

She nodded, and picked up the bowl. The apricots had absorbed so much of the honey and water mixture that they were full and fat, nestled among the fat, pale green gooseberries. Ned handed her a wooden spoon and she took it slowly from his hand. She spooned the mix carefully into the pie as Ned rolled her pastry circle onto the rolling pin. She dotted the pie with bits of the remaining butter. He carefully passed her the rolling pin and watched her roll the crust onto to the pie. He wanted to help her adjust it, but let himself watch her wrists and fingers as she tugged, pulled, and pinched the pie top into place. He reached over to the knife rack and found a small knife. He laid it on the table, not speaking. She picked it up, poked a few random holes in the top, and stepped back.

"Outstanding," he said. He picked it up, carried it carefully to the oven, and put it in. He straightened and looked at her. "I think it'll be good."

She nodded, not smiling, and untied her apron. "I'll help you clean up," she said.

Ned raised both hands. "Better not."

She looked down. "Okay. Yeah." She walked into the living room without looking at Ned.

Ned cleaned up, washing each dish by hand and drying it, automatically watching the clock and thinking about Chuck as the smell of ripe apricots filtered through the kitchen. When he remembered how her (his) shirt had ridden up when she reached over her head, he almost dropped his mother's mixing bowl. He laid it carefully on its proper shelf and then put his hands on the counter and leaned his weight on them. The counter creaked a bit. He heard the television in the living room go on. He wasn't sure if the sob he heard was Chuck or the television. He ached to find out, and knew it would be better not to know.

After forty minutes and seventeen seconds, Ned opened the oven door and the smell of apricots filled the kitchen like a sweet fog. Using oven mitts with a pattern of strawberries on them, he carefully conveyed the hot pie to his prep table.

"Smells wonderful," Chuck said.

He looked up to find her standing in the doorway, red-eyed. His heart wanted to break into tiny pieces. "I'm sorry," he said.

"For bringing me back to life?" She shook her head. "It's not your fault we're ... like this. We are what we are."

The Pie-Maker wasn't exactly sure what they were, although he knew what he desperately wished they could be. But he nodded and turned to the cupboard where the glasses lived. "I'll pour us some milk to go with the pie," he said.

She worked across the table from him, setting plates and knives and forks on opposite sides, deftly dodging past him as he filled the glasses and set them on the table. A dance of death, she thought sourly. But then she looked up and caught his look when he thought she wasn't looking at him and she felt warm and summery all over. She took a deep breath and decided -- again -- that one day with the Pie-Maker, dangerous as it was, was better than a lifetime without him in perfect safety.

They sat down, settling napkins. Ned cut the pie with his mother's silver pie server and slid a steaming hot piece onto a plate. He set it down and Chuck picked it up. She waited until Ned had served himself. The kitchen was warm and sunny and full of good smells. They smiled at each other. At the same exact moment, they each cut a piece of pie and stuck it on the end of a fork. At the same exact moment, each one reached across the table with the fork. Chuck ate a bite of pie off of Ned's fork. Ned ate a bite of pie off of Chuck's fork. They smiled, chewing happily. Ned thought about peaches and apricots, about honey poured through Chuck's fingers, about a pie made with love and exquisite care. Chuck thought about his strong hands kneading the dough, gently rolling it out, delicate and sensitive as they shaped the dough. She looked into his kind eyes and was glad she lived with such a man.

"Good pie," she said.

Ned nodded back.

At the same exact moment, each of them picked up their glass of milk.

"To good cooking," Chuck said, and held her glass out.

Ned held his out at the same time. "To honey," he said.

They clinked glasses over the pie.

THE END


End file.
